Field Trip to Fort Knox

Sixty-one campers and a crew of counselors squeezed onto the bus driven by our fearless bus driver, Susan. They traveled downriver to Fort Knox in Prospect, one of the best preserved fortifications on the New England seacoast. It was built during the 1840s and briefly housed soldiers. 

Campers loved the giant hide-and-seek game on the fort grounds. A downpour cooled them off during lunch. Thank goodness for covered pavilions! Many children checked out the gift shop looking for a souvenir of the trip. Swords and harmonicas were the hot items this year. For some reason, the counselors made the campers wait until returning to the Rec to try out their musical prowess on the harmonica. No fun! 

Old Town Rec is Out of this World!

Week 6 of Summer Camp was filled with space-age adventures! We celebrated the Mission to Mars with fun and games this week. Martian Manhunt was a favorite among our older campers and our youngest campers enjoyed Attack of the Martians! Our community room now looks like a galaxy; it’s filled with papier mache planets made by our campers! During the hot, summer days, we cooled off at the Orono Pool. That’s always a special treat! On Friday we blasted off to see the stars at the UMaine Emera Astronomy Center and searched for Geocaches on the UMaine campus! The campers were amazed by the story of the stars and had an astronomical time!

We’re celebrating Around the World during week 7 of summer camp. Each day we’ll explore crafts and games related to the continents. Monday starts off with a “trip” to Africa. We’d love some adventurous campers to join us! Asia is our destination on Tuesday. Have you ever played Ninja Dodgeball? Come and try it out! On Wednesday,prepare to learn about North American history at Fort Knox in Prospect! Latin rhythms and games are the plan for Thursday as we learn about South America, and on Friday we’ll end our week with some European fun! It’s sure to be a great journey!

This week's update

News from the Old Town Recreation Center

            Old Town Recreation Center’s Outdoor Adventure group, now self-named the Pathfinders, have been busy exploring! In the last two weeks, they hiked Acadia Mountain, mountain biked on the University of Maine trails, and hung around at Extreme Adventures ropes course.

            Our younger campers celebrated Water, Water, Everywhere this week with water balloons, relays, water gun battles, and swimming. Friday’s carnival, sponsored by the Bangor Rec Department, was so much fun! Each camper had tickets to participate in fun carnival games at Hayford Park in Bangor. There were so many games to choose from! Bounce houses, hula-hoop toss, Minute-to-Win-It, a dunk tank, face painting, and so much more! All of the campers had a great time!

            The last week of July is our Mission to Mars week. We are going to the planetarium and will have lots of space-themed fun. Hope to see you soon!

The First Annual Paper Airplane Golf Tournament

We tried out some new activities during our Life is Great week and the campers had a blast!

Paper Airplane Golf

Many of our campers have tried mini-golfing, but they've never golfed with paper airplanes! After a time of folding and creating, we took the paper airplanes out to the course. Our campers formed teams and golfed by throwing their airplanes toward the targets. The breeze added an extra challenge and leveled the playing field! They counted the number of throws to get their score and then added up the scores at the end. 

Our big team winner was The Llamas, a team created by Rhiannon, Emma, Jadyn, and Bella! Congratulations!

Congratulations to our top individual scorers!

4th place - Keegan

3rd place tie - Brody and Jarek

2nd place - Emma

1st place - Rhiannon

The Longhorns

The Nerf Warriors

#1/Lil Man Team

The tongue makes the airplane faster, right?

 Here's half of the Girl Power team

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The Flying Squirrels
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Congratulations to The Llamas, winners of the first annual paper airplane golf tournament!

Happy 1st Anniversary Old Town Recreation Center!

Happy 1st Anniversary Old Town Recreation Center!

We had a blast last Wednesday on our inflatable slides. 

Thank you for all of your support over the last year. 

It was a great year and we look forward to many more in the future!

Week 1 OAP article for the Penobscot Times

High-Flying Adventures at the Old Town Rec

by the Outdoor Adventure Program Campers

Great things are happening at the Old Town Recreation Center! The Outdoor Adventure Program’s summer fun started with some “Extreme Adventures” in Brewer on Monday. It was a great learning experience for the middle school-aged campers. They tried the zip lines, ropes course, and a giant swing that was 35 feet high that made them feel like they “were falling off a cliff!” The ropes course had some challenging places, like tight ropes, swaying walkways, and rings. Summer was stuck a few times, but she “still had fun.” Elle shared that “Hannah encouraged me to do the rings. She breezed past them, so I tried them.” Wren really enjoyed the slushies. The whole group had a great time and is planning more fun activities like it.

The Outdoor Adventure Program (OAP) group is intrigued by letterboxes and hopes to find some this summer. Letterboxes are usually in a sealed container. Inside them is a stamp and a notepad. The OAP group learned that they need their own notebooks and stamps so that they can leave their marks when they find a letterbox.  On Tuesday, the group tried letterboxing for the first time. A hike on the University of Maine trails to find the “Giving Tree” letterbox and “A Horse named Chip” letterbox was unsuccessful, but they do not plan to give up.  Kobe said, “We learned about how to use a compass and a map of the trails. It was rainy, but  we didn’t want to leave before we found one. We’ll do some more research and find them.” Alexis shared that “it was really muddy on the trail, but we got through it.” Later this summer, they plan to make a letterbox to hide at the Rec for the younger groups to go and find.

The Outdoor Adventure Program campers are not just about fun and games, either. They are exploding with ideas to help the community. Since they are the oldest group, they decided to take on responsibilities this summer, such as being role models for the younger campers, writing newspaper articles, creating a blog for the Old Town Rec community,  and community service. This summer the OAP would like to raise money for charity organizations and are planning some fundraisers, like car washes, bake sales, book drives, and bottle drives. There are also some fun activities planned. In addition to community service, they plan to take field trips twice a week.

The younger groups also began the summer with a blast! On Wednesday, the Explorers (grades K-1), Adventurers (grades 2-3), and Trailblazers (grades 4-5) went on a field trip to Playland Adventures. The younger campers have also been doing some fun activities at the Rec. The theme of this first week is superheroes. The campers have been dressing up and participating in superhero-based games, like “Superhero Testing”, “Kryptonite Disposal” and “Joker’s Challenge”.

Stay tuned for more fun at the Old Town Recreation Center!